There are, however, other concerns that determine choices towards organic management. Conversion to organic agricultural systems are triggered by different objectives, such as: securing a place on international markets, export promotion, economic self-reliance, finding alternatives to decreased access to agricultural inputs, natural resource conservation, food self-sufficiency, and rural and wi...

Information is a key component in improving smallholder agricultural production and linkages to remunerative markets, thus improve rural livelihoods, food security and national economies. The dynamics of using phones among farmers linking them to market outlets and other service providers are discussed. . The paper isolate strength, weakness and threats while analysing insights associated with ...

Aquaculture is often viewed narrowly as intensive culture of salmon and shrimp to provide high value products for luxury markets and is often associated with environmental degradation. The promotion of aquaculture for rural development has had a poor record in many developing countries, especially in Africa. This paper shows that aquaculture does contribute to the livelihoods of the poor, parti...

This paper uses Data Envelopment Analysis to measure scale and technical efficiencies of 925 farms in rural Colombia and a Tobit model to identify the effects of land market characteristics on efficiency. Findings indicate that although larger farms are more scale efficient, they are not more technical efficient than small farms. Participation in land markets increases technical efficiency, ind...

The omission of relevant independent variables in the estimation of agricultural production functions gives rise to mis-specification and biased estimators. Using disaggregated household survey data, this study finds that official positions and education of household heads are important determinant of grain output in rural China and should be incorporated into the production functions. The impa...

Agriculture is the largest sector in most sub-Saharan economies in terms of employment, and it plays an important role in supplying food and export earnings. Rural poverty rates remain high, and labor productivity is strikingly low. This paper asks how these factors shape the role of agriculture in African development strategies. Is agricultural growth a prerequisite for growth in other sectors...

We develop a model of many-to-many matching with contracts which subsumes as special cases many-to-many matching markets and buyer-seller markets with heterogeneous and indivisible goods. In our setting, in contrast to results for the setting of many-to-one matching with contracts, preference substitutability is sufficient and necessary to guarantee the existence of a nonempty lattice of stable...

We develop a multi-sector model of labor markets in developing countries in which workers can be in any of four states i) employed in the formal urban sector, ii) employed in the informal urban sector, iii) unemployed in the urban sector or, iv) employed in agriculture. Workers differ in the productivity of formal sector employment and there are floor wages below which firms can’t set wages. Mi...

We use recent farm household survey data from 5 Central European countries to explore the extent to which ill-functioning land and credit markets may present an obstacle to rural development. The first finding is that improved access to credit can, indeed, make a contribution to a more dynamic rural sector. A considerable share of rural households express their desire to expand agricultural cul...

The paper considers trends and risks of development local consumer markets rural territories, measures state programs aiming at sustainable developing markets. concepts municipalities territories are given. main indicators the market, such as turnover retail trade catering, well service sector, analyzed.